What We Learned About Technology From Watching Johnny Mnemonic

Here at Wired, we talk a lot about the evolving relationship between technology and culture. In order to help our readers keep up with the fast-paced changes of our increasingly digital world, we’ve decided to analyze the valuable lessons about technology contained within the most educational material that we as a society have ever produced: Hollywood films. Today’s lesson: 1995’s Johnny Mnemonic, unquestionably the greatest science fiction cyberpunk epic starring Keanu Reeves. Yeah, I said it.

The Plot

Set in the grim future of “the second decade of the 21st century” — technically, the decade that we’re living in right now — Johnny Mnemonic follows the adventures of Professional Actor Keanu Reeves, who has swapped out a chunk of his brain for a hard drive so that he can get into the lucrative business of information smuggling. As you might expect, getting someone to literally shove a USB port into your head can be a lot more trouble than it’s worth, so he’s looking to cash out and get his memories back after one last job.

In order to get the $1.4 million that he’ll need for his operation, Keanu turns to Udo Kier, which makes a lot of sense, since you’d have to erase all your memories of every movie ever in order to expect Udo Kier to give you anything but a swift and decisive betrayal at his earliest opportunity.

After Henry Rollins is crucified by a fundamentalist Christian assassin whose catchphrase is “Jesus time!” (AWESOME), Keanu hooks up with a gang of outlaws in the ruins of Newark led by Ice T and a cybernetic dolphin.

Sure enough, Kier sells him out to PharmaKom, the company that actually owns the information that he’s got locked up in his noggin, and everyone spends the next hour trying to cut off Keanu’s head while he runs around having seizures because the file’s too big. This is actually the most believable part of the entire movie, because having encoded information eating away at one’s brain is actually a pretty solid reason for someone to be completely unable to display any kind of human emotion while standing in front of a camera. It plays to Keanu’s strengths.

So what’s all the fuss about? Turns out, Neo is running around with PharmaKom’s unreleased cure for Nerve Attenuation Syndrome, also known as “The Black Shakes,” a debilitating disease that is transmitted over Wi-Fi. As revealed in the second half of the movie, millions of people across the world are suffering and dying from this disease, which provides a half-assed post-apocalyptic backdrop for the parts that are set in “The Free City of Newark.”

Personally, I suspect that the suffering and death is related a little less to the Black Shakes, and a little more to the fact that people are being treated by Henry Rollins in a hospital lit by oil-drum fires.

Eventually, after Rollins is crucified by a fundamentalist Christian assassin played by Dolph Lundgren whose catchphrase is “Jesus time!” (AWESOME), Keanu and his sidekick Jane (Dina Meyer) eventually hook up with the Lo-Teks, a gang of outlaws in the ruins of Newark led by Ice T and a cybernetic dolphin.

Despite the name, the Lo-Teks have a giant pyramid of televisions and sophisticated satellite equipment that they use for pirate broadcasts. After Dolph Lundgren and the Yakuza are dealt with, they plan to broadcast the contents of Ted “Theodore” Logan’s head, encouraging everyone to “get their VCRs ready” so they can store this valuable medical knowledge on a VHS tape.

That’s definitely the best way to distribute a cure for a disease, right? Right.

Screenshot: Johnny Mnemonic

The Tech

Aside from Keanu’s brain-mounted hard drive — which is contingent on a password made up of random images sent over a fax machine, just in case you forgot this was 1995 — the major use of technology in Johnny Mnemonic comes from a scene where he and Jane bust into a computer shop and rig up a system so that they can hack the planet and get an advantage over the Yakuza. In addition to a “stealth module” and a 5″ monitor set into a 20″ piece of grey plastic, Keanu dons a a giant VR visor and a pair of Nintendo Power Gloves™ and sets about some ultimate cyberhacking!

It’s … slightly less impressive than when the Wachowskis did their remake four years later with Laurence Fishburne in the role of Jane.

Instead, Johnny jacks into the same kind of neon cityscape that we saw in Hackers, but with the added difficulty of having to physically reach out and grab things and point to Beijing on an unlabeled map of the world. What’s interesting is that when he does all this, he’s gritting his teeth and struggling with wrenching open data pyramids and physically arranging files, which implies that William Gibson’s vision of the internet was something that was actually physically taxing to use.

This is a pretty stark contrast to the internet that we actually have, which is pretty much effortless from a physical standpoint but tends to erode you mentally over time with YouTube comments and drawings of My Little Pony characters with gigantic dongs.

At the climax of the movie — which, one more time just so we’re clear on this, involves Ice T and his cyborg dolphin broadcasting the cure for Wi-Fi disease to a VHS tape — Keanu has to hack his own brain. This sounds like a pretty awesome feat of cyberpunkery, but in reality, it looks like a slightly more high-stakes version of the video from Dire Straits’ “Money For Nothin’.”

CYBERSPACE

What We Learned

– The brain has a base storage capacity of 80 gigabytes, but if you apply a software upgrade — because, you know, that’s exactly how memory storage works — you can increase that to 160 GB. The Human Mind: slightly less useful for data storage than my 2nd-generation iPod.

– It’s entirely possible to cram 320 GB into something that only has the capacity to hold half of that, as long as you’re willing to have Henry Rollins critique your seepage. The best way to deal with this is by doing a little yoga, so keep that in mind next time you’re trying to fit an entire torrent’s worth of Pretty Little Liars episodes onto a flash drive.

– In the darkness of the 21st century, those who embrace technology will have fantastic, futuristic devices like bathroom sinks that activate with motion sensors. So basically, the future will be an airport.

– Should you reject technology, you get to paint your face like a kitty cat and hang out with Ice-T. So … kind of a mixed bag there.